Description of the Annotated Bibliography As part of the Individual Research Project, you are to produce an annotated bibliography that demonstrates your research knowledge of the subject you have chosen for your research project. Consider the annotated bibliography as a resource list that the audience/reader could use to find sources for their own research, determine the accuracy of your research, and/or look up additional information on your topic for their own interest. First, what is an annotation? Each source listed in an annotated bibliography includes an annotation – essentially a brief description of an article, book, Web site or other type of publication. However, an annotation is more than just a brief summary of a source. An annotation should give enough information to make a reader decide whether to read the complete work. In other words, if the reader were exploring the same topic as you, is this material useful and if so, why? Additionally, the annotation should show why the source was found to be useful (or not) for the research paper. What is an annotated bibliography? An annotated bibliography is an organized list of sources – books, articles, and/or electronic – (like a reference list) that address a specific research question or topic. In this case, you are addressing the research question or topic for your project. It differs from a straightforward bibliography in that each reference is followed by a paragraph length annotation. The kind of information and the amount of information included in each description depends on the audience and purpose that the bibliography is intended to serve. Depending on the assignment, an annotated bibliography might have different purposes: • Provide a literature review on a particular subject • Help to formulate a thesis on a subject • Demonstrate the research you have performed on a particular subject • Provide examples of major sources of information available on a topic • Describe items that other researchers may find of interest on a topic • Determine why a source is/isn’t useful for a paper on a topic Types of annotated bibliographies 1. Analytical or critical **For this Research paper, you will be producing a short, critical MLA/APA style annotated bibliography. Each annotation should be approximately 150 words long.** How do I write the annotations? – After you have found your sources, the next step is to write the annotations that you will include with each source. When writing your annotation, the complete citation should always come first and the annotation follows. Depending on the type of annotated bibliography you are writing, you will want to include: 1. The purpose of the work 2. A summary of its content 3. For what type of audience the work is written 4. Its relevance to the topic 5. Any special or unique features about the material 6. The strengths, weaknesses or biases in the material (critical/analytical only) Analytical or critical – An analytical or critical annotation not only summarizes the material, but it analyzes what is being said. It examines the strengths and weaknesses of what is presented as well as describing the applicability of the author’s conclusions to the research being conducted. For example: “Breeding Evil.” The Economist, 4 August 2005: Web. 10 June 2010. <https://www.economist.com/node/4247084> This editorial from the Economist describes the controversy surrounding video games and the effect they have on people who use them. The article points out that most critics of gaming are people over 40 and it is an issue of age, not of the games themselves. While the author briefly mentions studies done around the issue of violence and gaming, he does not go into enough depth for the reader to truly know the range of studies that have actually been done in this area, other than to take his word that the research is unsatisfactory. The author of this article stresses the age factor over violence as the real reason for opposition to video games and stresses the good gaming has done in most areas of human life. This article is a good resource for those wanting to begin to explore the controversy surrounding video games, however for anyone doing serious research, one should actually examine some of the research studies that have been done in this area rather than simply take the author’s word that opposition to video games is simply due to an issue of generational divide. *Notice the last sentence and word choice throughout. It criticizes the author’s research. This makes it analytical.
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